Cooperation Agreement of Association of Anarchist Movements

1. Terms

1.1. Association of Anarchist Movements is an interorganizational federation of Russian-speaking anarchists.

1.2. Acitivity of Association is directed at growth and organization of widespread popular movement - with goal to liberate the individual from any dictatorship and coercion, unconditional and full destruction of state systems of repression, search and practical realizaion of stateless forms of self-management.

1.3. The direct task of Association is creation of regular organizational base for coordination and concordance of activity of interregional anarchist unions, regional anarchist groups and individual participants of anarchist movement.

1.4. Participance in Association stipulate agitational-propagandistic, informational, or direct antistate activities, as well as activities aimed at the material support of the Association, the concrete forms and methods of which are determined by the participants of the Association locally according to this Agreement and the made decisions.

2. Organizational structure

2.1. Participance in Association is fixed. It may include various anarchist and anti-state groups, along with individuals, who voluntarily settle with to act according to this agreement.

2.2. Participation in the Association may be exercised either individually or in a collective form - by participation of individual in inter-regional and regional organizations.

2.3. Association has no highest or leading bodies. To each other all participants of Association are equal in rights.

2.4. Any real acting anti-state group, which granted Association with primary and backup contacts, may be recognized as collective member of the Association.

2.5. Inter-regional organizations within the Association may be based both on an ideological orientation (anarchist, anarcho-communist, anarcho-syndicalist, anarcho-ecological, libertarian movements, etc.) and on solving highly technical problems (counter-culture associations, unions of self-defense, etc.)

2.6. The monopoly of any group on the right of representation by region is not allowed. The main criterion to define "region" is actual possibility of regular contacts between participants, engaged with the local activity.

2.8. Individual member of the Association shall be a person who is not a member of any of the regional and interregional groups that are its collective members.

2.9. Overall coordination of the Association is put at effect on its congresses and decentralized systems of information exchange, formed through on a contractual basis.

3. Decision making

3.1. The basic form of preparation and concordance of decision made by Assocation is the Congress.

3.2. Congresses of Association, implementing tasks of coordination, do not exercise power of authority.

3.3. The Congress is open to all individuals and organizations belonging to the Association. Everyone present at the Association congress has the casting vote.

3.4. Guests attending a Congress, have an advisory voice.

3.5. Delegate votes from absent are excluded, but any participant of a Congress may raise his voice in defense of their interests.

3.6. Decision of a Congress can not be made by voting; to adopt general decisions it is necessary that nobody of its participants insisted on their fundamental objections to each of the solution.

3.7. Any participant attending a Congress may block decisions, which are unacceptable for him/her, after explaining his/her fundamental opposition.

3.8. If there is no general agreement on any issue, any group of participants of a Congress may openly express their opinion, adopting proper appeal, signed by name by all its supporters attending a Congress.

3.9. Decisions of a Congress since their adopting are of advisory nature. During a period of month from the moment the decision was made, every participant of the Association after reading the text has a right to complain in a epistolary well-reasoned form about a fundamental disagreement with any of it, submitting the application to the organizing committee (4.2).

3.10. Decisions of a Congress, which did not meet fundamental objections from participants within the specified period, become adopted on behalf of the Association and mandatory on all participants.

3.11. Decisions on a level of collective and individual participants of Association are made by their own judgement.

4. Congress convening procedure

4.1. Each Congress determines approximate location (town) and time (month and year) of the next Congress.

4.2. Each Congress make a decision that determines the composition of the Responsible Group (RG) of ADA.

4.3. The Responsible Group, carrying out the task of coordination between congresses, does not exercise authority. The activities of RG is fully accountable to the participants of the Association.

4.4. The structure of RG, regardless of geographic distance from each other, may include members of the Association, who voluntarily assume duties:

4.4.1. Responsible for the technical work - receives information about all changes in the composition of the Association and keeps a record of changes have occurred; takes objection to the decisions of the previous Congress, and promptly informs the other participants of the Association.

4.4.2. Responsible for the convening of the Congress - makes a preliminary schedule of the Congress and decides to organizational and technical issues relating to its implementation.

4.4.3. Responsible for international work - keeps in touch with friendly foreign interorganizational unions of anarchists and informs participants of Association in time about international anarchist activities and campaigns, provide assistance in coordinating actions and campaigns for international solidarity of participants of the Association.

4.4.4. Responsible for the financial charges - carries out fund-raising for projects approved by congresses as general to the participants of the Association, in support of the comrades who are serving time in prison and at the upcoming congress.

4.4.5. Responsible for information work provides information and technical assistance for inter-regional coordination of participants of the Association: in particular, information and technical support projects approved by Congress as general to the participants of the Association and provides information about current participants of the Association of Responsible Group upon request.

4.5. RG can, if there are sufficient reasons, change the approximate location of the forthcoming Congress and postpone the convening until three months necessarily informing participants of the Association not less than two months before the Congress.

4.6. RG sets specific meeting place for participants of the forthcoming Congress and the exact time of its start not less than two months before the Congress.

4.7. If any participant of RG between congresses clearly neglects his obligations, they may be accepted by any other participant of the Association, thus co-opted into the RG. Any means and information materials collected by participant who did not fulfill his obligations must necessarily be delivered to the new participant of Secretariat.

4.8. Congresses of the Association convened according to this Agreement, are considered valid, regardless of the number of participants.

5. Rights and obligations of participants

5.1. Participants of Association can:

5.1.1. Receive from RG of ADA information available to him on the composition of the Association and the forthcoming congresses.

5.1.2. Exchange information and practically cooperate with all other participants.

5.1.3. Attend to Congresses of Association and participate in decision making.

5.1.3. Block, having justified his/her position, the decision making on Congresses.

5.1.5. Block the decision making on the level of Association.

5.1.6. Independently determine the order of their his/her activity on all matters, which the current agreement and decisions of Association does not concern.

5.2. Participants of Association unconditionally exclude for themselves the struggle for state power and refuse all forms of political assistance to state system. It is considered inadmissible:

5.2.1. Entry in state structure as bearer of authority (except for the commanders of Ministry of Defense and EMERCOM units, railroad troops and special construction troops).

5.2.2. Intentional assistance of holding of official electoral campaigns (except for obvious orange actions).

5.2.3. Propaganda and agitation, directed at stregnthening and preservation of state system.

5.2.4. Entry into political organizations, parties, movements, oriented to stregnthening and preservation of state system.

5.2.5. Chauvinistic, racist and fascist propaganda.

5.2.6. Agential-informative activity in favor of government service.

5.3. Participants of Association admit the necessity of discharge of voluntary undertaken obligations and freely concluded agreements. For internal relations are considered inadmissible:

5.3.1. Aggression in relation to other participants of Association.

5.3.2. Wilful or regular neglect of obligations and agreements.

5.3.3. Address to public authorities in solving of conflict situations.

5.3.4. Open counteraction to realization of decisions of Association.

5.3.5. Spreading of wittingly false materials in the name of any participant of Association.

5.3.6. Other activity, which obviously contradicts present agreement.

6. Admission and expulsion of participants.

6.1. Admission to the Association of new collective participants is made by mutual agreement of all collective participants in the Association or by a decision of the Congress.

6.2. Admission to the Association of new individual participants can be made by decision of all participant of Association.

6.3. Information about admission of new participants and their contact details necessarily reported to RG ADA.

6.4.1. Admission of persons in organizations - collective participants of Association - is made by their own judgement, according to their intraorganizational agreements.

6.4.2. Creation of interregional and regional groups of active participants of Association is made by their own judgement. Such group automatically considered collective participant.

6.5. Each participant of Association can freely leave it at any time.

6.6. Automatically dropped out from Association are considered following participants:

6.6.1. Who did not conducted any activity provided by decisions of the Association in between the congresses of the Association, except those in prison, undergoing military service and who can not conduct such activities for health reasons.

6.6.2. Commited at least one action, listed above (5.2 and 5.3) as inadmissible.

6.7. Information about withdrawal and expulsion of participants is taken itso consideration by congress, and during recesses between congresses - by Responsible Group of ADA.

6.8. Fact of commiting these acts, evaluated as inadmissible, may be decided by any member of the Association (if obvious) or the arbitral tribunal (in the case of objections from the expulsed and the establishment of a conflict situation).

6.9. Arbitral tribunal is formed of persons enjoying the confidence of the parties, with their agreement. Either party may give a reasoned challenge to the composition of the arbitral tribunal by offering a real alternative candidate.

6.10. If parties fail to agree on the composition of the arbitral tribunal, its functions transferred to the Congress. In this case both sides of the dispute do not have a casting vote on an issue related to their conflict.

6.11. Participants declared quitting out of Association on the base of 6.6.2 or left it voluntarily and then committed inadmissible acts, can be reinstated only by decision of the Congress.

6.12. In the case if persons, which entry in groups - collective participants - commit inadmissible acts (5.2 and 5.3), to which the groups have no relation to, the situation can be considered a conflict and can be solved by the arbitral tribunal.

6.13. Persons, dropped out of organizations - collective participants, but dit not violate the decisions of Association and cooperation agreement, may enter into other collective participants or, if they wish, become individual participants of Association.

7. Possessions

7.1. Possessions of Association is generated from means, delivered for realization of its target programs and solving of target problems (convention of congresses etc.) or for costs at the judgement of the Association or its participants.

7.2. Means delivered to the Association are accountable to Association and are spent only on its relevant decisions. About them the RG ADA and the Congress are informed.

7.3. In Association there is no fees. Monetary funds, delivered without preliminary conditions to collective or individual participants, is spent by their judgement.

8. Attributes

8.1. The flag and the emblem of Association is the black flag.

8.2. Every participant of Association can use during actions both own attributes and attributes of Association.

9. Final statutes

9.1. Association acts regardless of anyone's permission; any registration on its participants' initiative is ruled out.

9.2. Present agreement can be changed only by decision, reached on Association level

edited by XXII Congess of ADA,

Yaroslavl, May of 2009